This paper examines how individuals select and mobilize local institutions when they transfer
business practices across societies that are construed as dissimilar to one another. We investigate
empirically how the American business practice of socially responsible investment (SRI) was
transferred to France and Quebec. Our analysis identifies five micro-strategies that were employed
to contextualize SRI, namely filtering, rerouting, stowing, defusing, and coupling. This repertoire of
micro-strategies extends previous research on contextualization, translation, and institutional
transfers and links them to one another. They may also help explain why some transfers succeed
while others fail.